Various portable tools have been designed to quickly make accurate and particularly designed cuts in various types of materials. Routers for instance can be used to make cuts into wood to create various designs for any type of wood product. Hand-held routers in particular have the advantages of portability and allow free movement over a cutting surface. However, they have some distinct disadvantages as well.
Hand-held routers, despite their advantages, can be difficult to use at times. Being hand held allows them great flexibility of movement, however, it comes at the price of stability and accuracy. Since these routers are hand-held, they are only as stable as the person holding them. This invariably leads to lost material and time when an errant slip, often even a slight one, can ruin a piece of wood being fabricated for a specific look or design. This has led to the development of various attempts to provide a support means for a number of hand-held cutting tools, including routers.
Previous attempts at support apparatuses for cutting tools such as routers involved using a plate with a handle mounted to it and an opening around which the cutting device would be mounted so that the device's cutting members could contact the surface of the material to be cut as required.
Another attempt mounted the cutting device in a tray that had an opened bottom through which the cutting members made contact with the cutting members made contact with the surface of the material to be cut. In addition this design mounts the tray to two rods that pass through two sets of openings at each end of the tray. These rods in turn are mounted where their two ends pass through an opening in a vertical support piece (so four vertical support pieces in all, two per rod). Each of these vertical support pieces then lie on opposite ends of two horizontal support bars. This allows the tray itself to move in a left-right fashion, while the cutting device within the tray itself may move in a line perpendicular to the movement allowed by the tray along the rods.
Another attempt involved mounting a cutting device to a circular end with an opening through which the cutting members would pass so as to make contact with the cutting surface of the material. In this design the circular end can move up and down along a slide to which the circular end is attached.
Another attempt used a mounting surface with an opening around which the cutting device was mounted and through which the cutting members of the cutting device would pass in order to contact the surface of the material to be cut. This design made use of two bottom-mounted wheels to provide movement along a cutting surface and sliding carriage to move the cutting device for movement away from the cutting surface.
Previous attempts at providing support for hand-held cutting devices fall short of providing all the benefits that the present invention offers. Nothing found in the prior art provides a stable and mobile mounting apparatus that maintains the nimbleness of a free hand-held cutting device that the present invention provides. Some of these prior attempts may allow for vertical and horizontal surface movement, but not in both simultaneously. Those that do allow vertical and horizontal surface movement often do so awkwardly and also lack a convenient method to make adjustments in another dimension (height adjustments). Some of these attempts also involve cumbersome designs with many moving pieces that must be adjusted frequently, which lowers productivity.
What is needed is a mobile but nibble cutting device guide and support apparatus that is easily adjustable for movement in all three dimensions. This invention provides that functionality.